Jenny Odell

Jenny Odell is an American artist, writer and educator who is based in Oakland, California. She wrote the book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019). Odell was born in San Francisco and grew up in Cupertino, California. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 2008 with a degree in English Literature and received her MFA in Design + Technology from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010.

Odell's work consists of acts of close observations such as bird watching, collecting screen shots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. Her artwork has for example used images from Google Earth and Google Maps. She has taught Internet art and digital/physical design at Stanford University since 2013. She was artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive in 2017. Her book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019) is about "how to disconnect from the attention economy".

Her Publications Are

Travel by Approximation: a virtual road trip. Self-published, 2010.

I Hate to Part with It: Craigslist Farewells. Self-published, 2012.

The Satellite Collections. Self-published, 2013.

The Archive of the Bureau of Suspended Objects. Self-published, 2015.

Satellite Landscapes. Self-published, 2015.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects at the Contemporary Jewish Museum.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects at the Palo Alto Art Center.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2019.

Her artwork has for example used images from Google Earth and Google Maps. She has taught Internet art and digital/physical design at Stanford University since 2013. She was artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive in 2017.

Odell wrote How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019) about “how to disconnect from the attention economy”. Her work consists of acts of close observations such as bird watching, collecting screen shots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. Apr 11, 2019 · Artist and writer Jenny Odell talks about why slowing down could be the only way to survive. "Orb of Ambivalence," Jenny Odell, digital print, 2017. "This print collects people from 1980s-era computer ads and catalog images.